By interleaving data sectors around a track it is possible average out sector-to-sector signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) variation, such that bad SNR (e.g. due to a media defect) can be spread across multiple media sectors. This lessens the impact on each individual data sector and improves overall SNR variation tolerance for a data storage device, such as a hard disk drive (HDD). Logical sectors are collected to form a new super-sector group, and then at the output, each media sector is formed from interleaved portions of the logical sectors, often referred to as slices. Each logical sector is divided into many slices and then distributed to nonadjacent places on the media to average out SNR. Because of the track length or due to grown media defect area, each super-sector group may contain a different number of logical sectors. For example, a super-sector may include from 1 to 16 logical sectors.
Maintaining a continuous data stream can be problematic because every media sector in a super-sector group includes a portion of each of the logical sectors. Until all media sectors in a super-sector are output, the next super-sector's logical sectors are not allowed to input, resulting in a gap between the super-sectors. One method of accounting for the discontinuity is to use a ping pong structure with dual super-sector buffers. A gapless output can be created using dual super-sector buffers, but memory size must be doubled (e.g. from 16 sectors to 32 sectors in size), resulting in increased silicon area cost.